Succession Planning for Financial Advisors: Building an Enduring Business, + Website

Introduction

Being an independent financial professional necessarily implies a commitment to a profession that surpasses a single career; the element of planning, or at least focusing on the future, implies that you’re starting something that will not and should not end with your own career.

Ninety-five percent of independent financial services professionals are one-owner practices. To the positive, these practices are among the most valuable professional service models in the United States. But almost all are assembling their practices using the wrong tools—tools borrowed from historically successful, but vastly different models, including wirehouses, broker-dealers, and even offices of supervisory jurisdiction (OSJs) and branch managers. Revenue-sharing, commission-splitting and other eat-what-you-kill compensation methods dominate the independent sector and virtually ensure that today’s independent practices, if left unchanged, will not survive the end of their founder’s career. Independent business models need different building and assembly tools, because of one major difference—independent advisors own the value they’re building, not their broker-dealers or the custodian they associate with—and that ownership carries with it significant rewards, and opportunities, and obligations. It’s no longer about having a job, yet that’s exactly how most independent owners approach their practices. Why create a succession plan for a practice designed all along to be just one-generational? ...